Its not as scary as you think. If you do a lace overlay, cut all your pieces in fabric and in lace and stitch them together all the way around on your seam allowance. Then you treat them as one piece of fabric and sew as you would any other material. Lace yokes are a bit more delicate but the overlay technique is very easy. If you use contrasting colours you will get a very nice effect, too. I hope this is giving you some ideas to try out.